Letter to the Editor: Questions for Congress

By PAUL YOUNGSt. George

Editor,

Will our five United States Congressmen answer to the Utah voters in this paper on the editorial page as a guest writer answering questions that I and the majority of Utahns would like answered. As a US Congressman, you all, directly or indirectly, have control over oil production on US federal lands. Taxpayers own these lands and the energy that lies beneath them, but 97 percent of the Federal Outer Continental Shelf and 94 percent of on-shore government lands are locked away by the actions of environmental groups. Are you willing to help increase, within the United States, output of oil and gas to make us independent from foreign oil? Or are you afraid of losing the environmentalists votes?

How many, and how often, of you have voted against supplying American consumers with 10.4 billion barrels of oil from the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, and 85 billion barrels of oil from the Outer Continental Shelf and trillions of barrels of oil shale in the West?

The sum of oil reserves listed above is 2,095 trillion barrels of oil. The total proven oil reserves for the entire world is 1.3 trillion barrels. Why are we handcuffed to OPEC? If you want to include the Karparowitz Plateau, you add an additional 100 million barrels of oil to the US total.